In
Ireland the “O” prefix for O’Sullivan fell into
disuse with the strengthening of English rule from the 17th century.By 1866 only 4% used it.

The 20th century saw the trend reversed,
although the prefix has not been equally restored in all locations.O’Sullivans were 96% in the Cork area, while
in nearby Bantry they are 80% and in the Dublin area about 83%.The average for all of Ireland is in the order
of 89%.

Outside
Ireland, however, Sullivan
remains the main spelling.The following
is an estimate of the numbers
today.

Numbers (000's)

O'Sullivan

Sullivan

Total

Ireland

40

6

46

UK

2

33

35

America

3

57

60

Elsewhere (1)

1

17

18

Total

46

113

159

(1) Canada, Australia, and
New Zealand.

Early O'Sullivan History

The
time-line below shows some O’Sullivan accounts
from the Irish annals.The conflicts
with their neighboring McCarthys were a recurring feature:

1193.Normans forced Sullivans from Knockgraffan to Cork
and Kerry.
1214.Sullivan boys killed by McCarthy.
1280.Sullivan united with McCarthy against
Normans.
1317.Sullivans rebelled against
McCarthy
1320. The Bantry monastery in O'Sullivan's country founded by
O'Sullivan from Franciscan friars.
1398.McCarthy killed O'Sullivan the Bold and
two sons of
O'Sullivan.
1404.War between McCarthy
and Sullivan.Sullivan
drowned.
1485.Donal O'Sullivan Beare
died.1549. Dermot O'Sullivan, a kind and friendly man to his friends,
was
burned by gunpowder in his own castle

Dunboy Castle and the O'Sullivan Curse

Dunboy
castle was built on the Beara peninsula in
county Cork in the 15th century and shortly afterwards became the
primary
residence of the O’Sullivan Beare.Its positionenabled the
clan to control the sea fisheries off the Irish coast and to collect
sizeable
taxes from Irish and Continental fishing vessels sheltering in the
haven.

In
1549 the chief of the clan accidentally blew himself up with gunpowder
there.True to humorous form, the Irish
memorialized him with the nickname Diarmuid
a Phudair, or “Dermot of the Powder.”

After the O’Sullivan defeat at
Kinsale in 1601, the English laid siege to Dunboy castle.It fell after a bloody battle.The 58 survivors of the
two-week siege were executed in the nearby market square. The
English then destroyed all of the remaining standing walls of the
castle with
gunpowder.

In the 1700’s the English Government granted the
O’Sullivan lands at Dunboy to the Puxley family. The O’Sullivans
were
outraged and foretold misery and bad luck to the interlopers. The
legend of the
O’Sullivan curse was born.

The Puxley family
brought copper mining to the area and became quite wealthy as a
result. The manor grew along with every Puxley generation until
the copper
dried up and tragedy stuck the Puxley family. Henry Puxley was orchestrating a new addition to the
Puxley
mansion when his wife died in childbirth. He was so distraught by
her
death that he packed his bags and left Ireland forever. The house was
unfinished and left in the hands of caretakers.Then in 1921 the IRA, convinced that the
house was meant to house English troops, torched Puxley Manor.

The Dunboy estate
remained abandoned for years.In the
early 2000’s an investment group started building a new luxury hotel on
the site
of the ruined estate.However, in 2008
the worldwide financial crash put the project in a tailspin and it was
abandoned.The O’Sullivan curse had
struck again!

Morty Oge
O'Sullivan Beare

In
the Beara area along the shores of Bantry Bay,
it was said that a thousand traditions hanged on the name of Morty Oge.He was the last of the chiefs of the princely
line of the O'Sullivan Beares and was reputedly as picturesque as the
wild
mountain scenery of his native home.

At
the time of his birth his family had been broken in fortune.So he went abroad, as did many of the “Wild
Geese” at that time.He fought for the
Spanish in the Austrian War of Succession. An official recorded him in
1738 as
“Muirtead Oge O' Sullivan of Eyeries in this country” and he was
presented with
a richly mounted sword for his bravery during the fighting.He was a dark, handsome man with a fine
figure and, according to the local tradition, “the finest man in the
Irish
Brigade.”

Around
1750 he returned to his native Ireland and, with his boat and
the support of a body of some trusted men, engaged in smuggling.Each of his trips to the French coast meant
scores of new recruits for the Irish “Wild Geese” and a return cargo of
smuggled goods. Morty Oge’s activities attracted the attention of a
revenue
agent named John Puxley.At one point
they met and John Puxley was shot and killed.After that Morty Oge was a marked man.

He
escaped to France.Although outlawed he
still managed to make
frequent visits home to his family.However, on this final visit in 1754, he was betrayed and
captured by
the English.He was executed and his body towed headless to Cork.The
Lament for O’Sullivan Beare commemorates him.

Father Daniel Sullivan of
Ballylongford

Father
Daniel Sullivan was the parish priest of
Ballylongford in county Kerry from 1823 until his death in June 1832 at
the
time of a cholera epidemic.

Before his death he had
expressed a wish of being buried inside the church. Suspecting,
correctly, that
the cholera epidemic would cause a problem with this, a group of
Ballylongford
people secretly buried him at night, at two o’clock in the morning,
inside the
church. The next day a Catholic
magistrate ordered his body disinterred and then buried in the church
grounds.

This created
much controversy.The body was indeed
exhumed and re-buried "amidst
the execrations and yells of hundreds, who certainly, had it not been
for the
presence of the police, never would have allowed the remains of their
priest to
have been treated with such indignity."

The Sullivan
Family of Berwick, Maine

Owen
O’Sullivan and Margery Brown both arrived in
York, Maine in 1723 on the same ship from Limerick.Owen
was 33 years old at the time and Margery
a nine year old orphan.Twelve years
later Owen O’Sullivan was Master John Sullivan and he married Margery
Brown
despite their 20 year difference in age.They made their home in the Pine Hill area of Berwick, Maine.

John
did
not involve himself in the physical labor of running his farm, but
instead
spent his time studying and reading. While Master Sullivan
poured over
his books, she managed the farm, the household and the six children.
These children inherited the intelligence of their father and the
grit of
their mother. Four were Revolutionary War heroes and two were
Governors.
She used to say: “I have dropped corn many a day with two
governors, a
judge in my arms and a general on my back.”

The
children John and Margery Sullivan raised in Berwick, Maine were as
follows:

Benjamin
(1736-1767) who served in colonial navy, but was lost at sea.

Daniel
(1738-1782)
who fought in the Revolutionary War, but was captured by British
soldiers and
later died in a prison ship in New York harbor.

John (1740-1795)
who
distinguished himself as General Sullivan during the Revolutionary War.

James (1744-1808) who was Judge
James Sullivan and Governor of Massachusetts in 1807.

Mary
(1752-1827) who was their only daughter and was, like her father,
a
well-known schoolteacher.

and
Eben (born in 1753) who fought in the
Revolutionary War, was captured, but eventually released.

Sullivan's Hollow

When Tom Sullivan first settled there in the early 1800’s
from South Carolina, this part of southern Mississippi was still
Choctaw
territory.According to family lore,
Pappy Tom and his sons built their house by cutting pine logs in the
daytime
and assembling them after dark, using large bonfires for light.After clearing the land, the Sullivans farmed
it.By 1830 they were well established
in what became known in Smith county as Sullivan’s Hollow.

For
the next century
Sullivan’s Hollow developed a famous, some would say notorious,
reputation for
being “the meanest, roughest, toughest place around.”The meanest of the Sullivans there was
probably “Wild Bill” Sullivan in the early 1900’s:

"He
killed numerous individuals,
some say as many as fifty, although seldom could anyone name a victim.Others said he was the meanest son-of-a-gun
that ever walked the face of the earth and that he took his
grandfather's place
as the tyrant of the valley. His mother called him lead-proof, the clan
called
him wild, and his enemies called him everything their imaginative ire
could
think of.He drank heavily and brawled
weeknights as well as on Saturdays, fouling the air with curses and
drunken
shouts."

It
was generally agreed that few blacks were welcome in the
Hollow.Once Wild Bill Sullivan caught a
black man, he would tie a bundle of bobwire to his back and make him
get down
on all fours and crawl a mile, before telling him to leave the Hollow.

There
has
been both a book written (by Chester Sullivan) and a documentary film
made
about Sullivan’s Hollow.